Discover how to elevate your website design with the 60/30/10 rule, a powerful color proportion technique that enhances visual appeal, user experience, and brand identity. Learn its benefits, application, and tools for WordPress users.
The post “The 60/30/10 Rule Made Our Website Designs Infinitely Better” first appeared on WP Mayor.
Are you looking for an easy way to show a contact form popup on your WordPress website?
Contact forms are great for communicating with your visitors. Placing them in a popup makes it even easier for your customers to contact you about your products and services.
In this article, we will show you how to add a contact form popup in WordPress.
Every WordPress website or blog needs a contact form so users can reach out with questions, feedback, or problems.
However, if your contact form is only on a single page, then it’s hard for people to find it.
As a result, your users may end up leaving your site before contacting you, and you could lose potential leads and conversions.
A contact form popup helps solve this issue by allowing your visitors to quickly view the form by clicking a button, so they can get in touch with you from whatever page they’re on.
It helps keep people on your website, as they don’t have to exit the page they are viewing. You can also grow your email list using a contact form popup.
That said, you will first need to create a contact form and then place it in a popup to display on your web pages. Don’t worry, we will guide you on creating a contact form and adding it to a popup in WordPress.
First, you will need to select a WordPress contact form plugin.
There are many free and paid options you can choose from, but we recommend using WPForms as it’s the best option.
WPForms is a beginner-friendly form plugin and offers a drag & drop builder that allows you to create a contact form in WordPress in just a few clicks. It also offers prebuilt form templates and lots of customization options.
For this tutorial, we will use the WPForms Lite version because it is free and offers a contact form template.
However, you can also use its premium version to unlock more features. For instance, WPForms Pro offers multiple form templates, more customization options, powerful addons, and lets you collect online payments.
To start, you will first need to install and activate the WPForms Lite plugin. If you need help, then see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Once the plugin is active, you are now ready to create your contact form. All you have to do is go to WPForms » Add New from your WordPress dashboard.
After that, WPForms will ask you to enter a name for your form and select a template.
Go ahead and select the ‘Simple Contact Form’ template.
Next, you can add fields in the form using the drag-and-drop builder.
Simply drag the fields you want to add to the form from the options given in the menu on your left. You can also reorder the positions of each field in the form.
WPForms also lets you customize each field in the contact form.
For example, if you click on the Name field, then you’ll get different options, such as changing its label and format. You can even add a description or mark any field as required.
Once you are done, go ahead and click the ‘Settings’ option to configure the form notification and confirmation.
In the General settings, you can rename the form, change the submit button text, enable anti-spam protection, and more.
Next, you can go to the Notifications settings option. By default, the notifications are sent to the admin email that is set up on your WordPress website.
However, you can send your contact form notification to any email address you want. If you wish to receive notifications on multiple emails, then separate each email with a comma.
For the email subject line, WPForms uses the form name you entered earlier. However, you can edit the text of the subject line to whatever you wish.
After that, go ahead and click the Confirmations option.
WPForms will use ‘Message’ as the default confirmation type, where your visitors will see a thank you message upon submitting a form.
However, you can change the message type and redirect users to a specific page on your website when they complete a form.
Once you are done creating a contact form, make sure to click the ‘Save’ button at the top right corner to save your changes.
Next, click the ‘Embed’ option in the top corner next to the Save button.
When a new window appears, select the ‘use a shortcode’ option.
WPForms will display a shortcode for your contact form as soon as you click the link. We suggest that you keep this tab/window open as you will need it in the next step, where we’ll show you how to add your contact form in a popup.
To create a contact form popup, you will need a WordPress popup plugin.
We recommend using OptinMonster as it is the best lead generation and conversion optimization plugin for WordPress. Over 1.2 million websites use the powerful tool.
For this tutorial, we will use the OptinMonster Pro version, which includes a clutter-free template and advanced display rules to show the popup.
You will first need to sign up for an account by going to the OptinMonster website. Simply visit the website and click the ‘Get OptinMonster Now’ button.
Next, you will need to install and activate the free OptinMonster plugin on your website. For more details, follow our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After the plugin is active, you will see the setup wizard. Go ahead and click the ‘Connect Your Existing Account’ button.
A popup window will now appear, and OptinMonster will ask to connect to your account.
Simply click the ‘Connect To WordPress’ button.
Now that your account is connected, the next thing is to create a new campaign for your contact form popup.
You can start by going to OptinMonster » Campaigns and then clicking the ‘Create Your First Campaign’ button.
On the next screen, you will have to select a campaign type.
Since we will create a contact form popup, select ‘Popup’ as your Campaign Type.
After that, scroll down to choose a template for your popup. OptinMonster offers over 75 attractive and highly converting designs for your popups.
You can select any template that you like. Next, enter a name for your campaign and click the ‘Start Building’ button.
Now using the drag-and-drop builder in OptinMonster, you can edit your popup template.
You will now see different Blocks appear in the menu on your left. Simply head over to the ‘WPForms’ block and drag and drop it on your template.
After that, you’ll need to click the ‘Form Selection’ dropdown menu from the block settings in the left menu and select the ‘Add Shortcode Manually’ option.
From here, enter your WPForms contact form shortcode in the block. To find the code, go back to your WPForms embed settings and copy the shortcode.
An important thing to note is that you won’t see a preview of the contact form in the template when you add the shortcode.
This is normal, as your contact form will appear when the campaign is published.
Next, you can go to the Display Rules tab at the top to choose when the popup should appear on your website.
By default, OptinMonster will set it to when the time on the page is 5 seconds, and the popup will appear on any page.
However, you can change the display rule settings and select different triggers and targeting options.
We suggest using the MonsterLink (On Click) targeting. This way, your popup will appear when a visitor clicks a link or a button.
After that, you can click the ‘Copy MonsterLink Code’ button and add it to any text, image, or button on your website.
For more details, you can follow our beginner’s guide on how to add a link in WordPress.
Your MonsterLink code will look like this in HTML:
<a href="https://app.monstercampaigns.com/c/ep6f5qtakxauowbj8097/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Subscribe Now!</a>
However, to embed the link on your WordPress blog post or page, you just need the URL from the code.
https://app.monstercampaigns.com/c/ep6f5qtakxauowbj8097/
For example, let’s say you want to add a contact us button on your site. You can start by editing any page or post and go to your WordPress editor. Next, click the (+) plus sign at the top and add a ‘Buttons’ block.
After that, you can enter a text for your button and then click the link icon.
Now add the MonsterLink URL to your button.
Once you have done that, publish your WordPress post or page. The MonsterLink will now be added to your contact us button.
Next, head back to your OptinMonster campaign to complete the configuration.
After selecting MonsterLink as your target and showing it on any page, you can click the ‘Next’ button at the bottom.
On the next screen, you will see options to change the campaign view type, add a MonsterEffect animation, and play a sound when the popup appears.
Go ahead and click the ‘Next’ button when you are satisfied with the settings.
After that, OptinMonster will show a summary of your Display Rule settings.
This helps to ensure you have correctly set up when your campaigns will appear on your website.
Now, you are ready to take your campaign live and publish your contact form popup. To do that, go to the ‘Publish’ tab at the top.
Next, you can click the ‘Preview’ button before publishing your campaign. This will show you a live preview of how your popup will look on your website.
When you are happy with the appearance of your campaign, change the ‘Publish Status’ from Draft to Publish.
You can exit the OptinMonster campaign builder and check the status of your campaign from your WordPress dashboard as well.
Simply click the ‘Status’ dropdown menu on your right and change the status from Pending to Published.
Don’t forget to save the changes.
Next, go to the contact us button you created earlier with MonsterLink and see the contact form popup in action.
We hope this article helped you learn how to add a contact form popup in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to choose the best website builder or our comparison of the best payroll software for small businesses.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Add a Contact Form Popup in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.
Breadcrumbs are now baked into SmartCrawl, along with another hotly requested feature… setting primary categories for posts and products!
SmartCrawl 3.5 gives you the ability to improve your WordPress site navigation for users and search engines with two new powerful features: breadcrumbs, and the ability to specify primary categories when assigning multiple categories to your posts or product pages.
In this article, we explain the benefits of using SmartCrawl’s latest new features and how to get the most out of them. We’ll cover:
Let’s get cooking…
In the classic fairytale, siblings Hansel and Gretel left a trail of breadcrumbs when they went deep into the forest so they would not get lost and have a path to navigate on their return.
Aptly named, breadcrumbs are an essential navigation aid that can help visitors and search engines better understand your website’s structure.
According to research, 38% of first-time website visitors look at navigational links on a page. So, the easier you make it for users to navigate your site, the better their experience. Especially if your website has a hierarchical structure with lots of nested pages.
And it goes without saying that improving your site’s navigation is also good for SEO, as it helps search engine bots crawl your pages and index your content more efficiently.
Here are some other reasons why you should use breadcrumbs on your WordPress site:
Breadcrumbs are a type of secondary navigation scheme that show users the path they have taken to reach a particular page on a website.
They don’t replace your site navigation menu, they support and complement it. So, a good place to put them is at the top of a page, just below your site’s primary navigation menu or the main header section.
However, you can also use them at the bottom of your page or even on your sidebar.
As you will see later in this post, you can pretty much add a breadcrumb anywhere on your site using a shortcode.
The best way to find what works best for your site is to test different locations and use tools like heatmaps or analytics to measure your results.
What happens if you assign multiple categories to a post? How do breadcrumbs choose which path to display?
The answer is… breadcrumbs will choose whichever category you have specified as the primary category for the post.
Primary categories are the main classification of your business, product, or service and can help search engines understand the primary focus of your website, so the ability to select primary categories in SEO is important.
If you assign a primary category to your posts, breadcrumbs don’t have to guess. It’s as simple as that!
SmartCrawl not only makes it easy to add breadcrumb navigation to your website and assign primary categories to your posts and product pages, but it automatically adds structured data to your breadcrumbs. This helps search engines to understand and categorize your content and present it correctly to users.
Plus, SmartCrawl gives you complete control over how your breadcrumbs appear, making it easy to provide visitors with the information they need to navigate your site.
To activate SmartCrawl’s breadcrumb feature, go to SmartCrawl > Advanced Tools > Breadcrumb and click on activate.
Activating the feature gives you access to a range of settings and options for configuring your breadcrumbs.
Let’s go briefly over SmartCrawl’s breadcrumb settings:
Let’s look at a few ways to customize breadcrumbs by tweaking SmartCrawl’s settings.
The Breadcrumb Separator section lets you specify a separator symbol from a list of presets, but you can also add your own by entering HTML characters.
So, for this example, let’s add an emoji into the custom separator field…
Here’s the result…
You can also add a prefix to your breadcrumbs in the Configurations section…
And here’s the result…
Let’s do one more tweak and hide the post title from our breadcrumb trails…
And here’s our customized breadcrumb sans title…
SmartCrawl gives you additional options to customize breadcrumb label formats across your site.
Customize breadcrumb label formats with a wide range of options.
This allows you to add additional information to your breadcrumbs such as post authors, dates and time, your site title, etc.
Breadcrumbs improve your website’s SEO and search engine visibility, provide visitors with an easy way to navigate your site, reduce bounce rates, and increase click-through rates.
Smartcrawl’s breadcrumb feature is customizable, flexible, user-friendly, SEO-friendly, and compatible with all WordPress themes and plugins.
Additionally, SmartCrawl automatically ads breadcrumb schema markup and the ability to specify a primary category for posts and product pages with multiple categories assigned.
SmartCrawl is the free SEO plugin that lets you have your cake and eat it too… right down to the tastiest breadcrumbs!
See our documentation section for more information on using this feature and, if you have any questions, ask our 24/7 support team or check out our new AI Assistant by clicking the Support tab inside The Hub.
Do you want to add a sliding side cart in WooCommerce?
This allows shoppers to see their shopping cart from any page on your online store. Customers can then add items to their basket, remove products, and add coupons without ever having to visit a separate cart page.
In this article, we will show you how you can easily add a sliding cart in WooCommerce.
A sliding side cart is a panel that appears when a customer adds an item to their basket.
Customers can also open the cart at any time by clicking on the cart icon. This allows them to check their shopping basket without having to visit a separate WooCommerce cart page.
Depending on how the cart is set up, shoppers may also be able to add and remove items as well as apply coupons directly from the sliding panel. You can even add call to action buttons such as a link to your WooCommerce checkout page.
Sliding carts can improve the customer experience by removing friction from the shopping process, and help shoppers keep track of how much they’ll pay at checkout. This can reduce cart abandonment rates, while also possibly increasing the average order value.
With that being said, let’s see how you can add a sliding side cart in WooCommerce. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.
The quickest and easiest way to create a sliding side cart is by using Cart For WooCommerce By FunnelKit. This free plugin allows you to add a cart icon to your online store.
Shoppers can click the button to open the sliding side cart.
You can change the cart’s colors, borders, buttons, messaging, and more.
There are a ton of options to make it perfectly fit your WordPress theme.
You can show the cart button across your entire site, limit it to WooCommerce pages only, or add the button to specific pages and posts using a shortcode.
How to Setup the Cart For WooCommerce Plugin
First, you’ll need to install and activate the FunnelKit Cart for WooCommerce plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to FunnelKit » Cart. You’ll see a preview of the sliding slide cart towards the right of the screen.
You can now customize the cart to better suit your needs.
To start, you can decide whether to show the cart icon across your entire website or on WooCommerce pages only.
If you select ‘Entire Site’, then shoppers can open the sliding cart from any page, so this is a good choice for online marketplaces and stores.
However, some WooCommerce sites have lots of non-ecommerce content. For example, you might run a popular WordPress blog, but use WooCommerce to sell merchandise to your fans.
Showing a cart button on every single blog post may become annoying. In that case, you can check the ‘WooCommerce Pages’ radio button.
Another option is ‘None,’ which hides the cart icon completely.
If you select the ‘None’ option, then you can add the icon to any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode. You can also add the icon to your navigation menu.
We’ll show you how to do this later in the post, but for now, select ‘None’ if you plan to add the cart icon manually.
After making this decision, select ‘Bottom Left’ or ‘Bottom Right’ depending on where you want to show the cart button. Here, it may help to check how the button will look on your online store by selecting ‘Preview on Page.’
By default, the plugin shows ‘Review Your Cart’ at the top of the sliding side cart.
You can replace this with your own messaging by typing into the ‘Cart Heading’ field.
If you don’t want to show a heading, then simply leave the field empty.
By default, FunnelKit shows the cart icon before the shopper adds any items to their basket.
If you prefer, then you can hide the icon until the visitor starts adding items. Simply click on the ‘Hide Cart Icon’ toggle so that it turns blue.
This is all you need to create a basic sliding side cart, but there are settings that can get you even more sales. With that in mind, let’s take a look at FunnelKit’s more advanced features.
Accept Coupons in the WooCommerce Sliding Side Cart
Coupons are a great way to get more sales and build customer loyalty.
If you’ve created any smart WooCommerce coupons using the Advanced Coupons plugin, then shoppers can type them directly into the sliding cart page.
When the customer clicks on ‘Apply,’ the sliding cart will show how much they’ve saved.
Since customers can see the discount straight away, this will encourage them to add more items to their basket and may reduce your cart abandonment rates.
You can create these codes using the built-in WooCommerce coupon feature or by using a coupon code plugin.
To add the coupon field, click on the ‘Enable Coupon Box’ toggle, which turns it from grey (disabled) to blue (enabled).
After that, you can switch between ‘Minimized’ and ‘Expanded’ layouts. Minimized takes up less space so it’s less distracting, but shoppers will need to expand the coupon section before they can type in any codes.
In the following image, you can see the minimized layout.
After choosing a layout, you can change the text that FunnelKit uses for the coupon box heading, discount placeholder text, and button text.
Customize the Cart Summary
The cart summary shows customers how much their purchase will cost. This helps reduce cart abandonment rates since there are no nasty surprises at checkout.
For that reason, we recommend leaving the ‘Show Subtotal’ toggle enabled.
However, if you want to simplify the side cart, then you can click to disable the ‘Show Subtotal’ toggle.
You can also show any savings the customer has qualified for, including discounts from any coupons they’ve applied.
In this way, you can use FOMO to increase conversions, especially if the savings are time-sensitive. For example, you might schedule coupons in WooCommerce so the customer can only use them for a limited time.
If you prefer to hide this information from the sliding side cart, then you can disable the ‘Display Savings’ toggle.
You can also replace the ‘Saving Text’ and ‘Shipping Text’ with your own custom messaging.
Customize the WooCommerce Cart’s Call To Action
The sliding side cart has a default checkout button, but you can customize this call to action button to get more conversions. To start, you can add a checkout icon using the ‘Enable Button Icon’ toggle.
This can be particularly useful if you’re creating a multilingual WordPress site.
You can also add the cart price to the checkout button using the ‘Enable Cart Price’ toggle.
This may help shoppers keep track of how much the cart will cost, especially if you’ve removed the subtotal from the cart summary section.
By default, FunnelKit adds a ‘Continue Shopping’ link at the bottom of the sliding side cart. You can replace this text with your own messaging by typing into the ‘Continue Shopping Text’ field.
After that, choose whether this link will simply close the side cart panel or redirect the shopper to your WooCommerce store page.
Most shoppers will expect to exit the sliding cart, so we recommend selecting the ‘Close Side Cart’ button.
If you select ‘Redirect to Shop,’ then you may want to change the ‘Continue Shopping Text’ text so it’s clear what will happen when customers click the link.
Create a Custom Empty Cart Screen
It is possible to hide the cart button until the shopper adds at least one item to their basket, following the process described above.
However, if you don’t hide the button then customers may sometimes see an empty cart screen.
You can change the title, description, and button text using the settings in the ‘Empty Cart’ section. Typically, you’ll want to encourage customers to start shopping. For example, you might talk about things you offer such as free shipping or a money-back guarantee.
You might even give the shopper a coupon code such as a buy one get one free (BOGO) discount.
You can also choose whether clicking on the ‘Shop Now’ button will take the customer to the WooCommerce store page, or simply close the side panel.
We recommend selecting ‘Redirect To Shop’ as this will make it easier for shoppers to start adding items to their carts.
Add The Cart Icon Anywhere on your Site
If you want more control over where the cart icon appears, then you can add it to any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode. You can also add it to your site’s menu.
This is a great choice if you selected ‘None’ in the ‘Icon Visibility’ settings following the process described above.
However, if you selected ‘WooCommerce Pages’ then this method allows you to add the cart icon to other important areas of your site. For example, you might add the icon to your custom home page or contact form.
To start, select ‘Cart Menu’ and then click on the ‘Enable Cart Menu’ toggle.
You can now change how the icon looks by selecting one of the icon templates, and choosing whether to show the product count and cart total as part of the icon. This information can help visitors keep track of their carts.
You can also change the icon size and text size. As you make changes, the small preview will update automatically so you can try different settings to see what looks the best.
When you’re happy with how the sliding side cart icon looks, click on the ‘Save’ button.
You can now add the icon to any page, post, or widget-ready area using the code next to ‘Embed Shortcode.’
For more information on how to place the shortcode, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.
Another option is to add the icon to your site’s navigation menu. In this way, the sliding side cart is always within easy reach, without distracting from the main page content.
To do this, open the ‘Add to Menu’ dropdown and choose the menu you want to use.
After that, click on the ‘Save’ button.
Now if you visit your WordPress website, you’ll see the cart icon in the navigation menu.
Add Your Own Colors and Branding
You may want to change the sliding side cart’s colors to better match your WooCommerce theme or branding. To change the text color, button color, link color, and more, go ahead and click on ‘Styling.’
To change any of the default colors, simply give it a click. This opens a popup where you can try out different colors.
For example, in the following image, we’re customizing the border.
Another option is to type a hex code into the ‘Hex’ field. This is perfect if you already have a specific shade in mind.
If you don’t know what hex code to use, then it may help to use a site like HTML Color Codes. Here, you can explore different colors and then get a code that you can simply paste into the FunnelKit plugin.
How to Create a Responsive Sliding Side Cart
Many people buy products and services using a mobile device. With that in mind, you’ll want to make sure the sliding side cart looks just as good on smartphones and tablets, as it does on desktop computers.
Here, it may help to change the cart’s width so it doesn’t completely fill the small screen of a mobile device. To do this, click on ‘Styling’ and then look at the ‘Cart Preview Mobile Width.’
You may want to try typing different values into this field. If you do change the default settings, then it’s a good idea to check the mobile version of your WordPress site from the desktop to make sure you’re happy with the results.
While you’re on this screen, you can also change the width of the sliding side cart on desktop. To do this, simply change the number in the ‘Cart Preview Desktop Width’ field.
How To Publish Your Sliding Side Cart
When you’re happy with how the sliding side cart is set up, it’s time to make it live. Simply click on the ‘Draft’ button next to ‘Cart’ and then choose ‘Publish.’
Now if you visit your online store, you’ll see the sliding cart live.
If you want to remove the sliding side cart at any point, then just head back to FunnelKit » Cart in the WordPress dashboard. Then, click on the ‘Publish’ button and select ‘Draft.’
If you want to increase the average order value on your store, then you can upgrade to FunnelKit Cart Pro. This advanced sliding side cart plugin adds powerful upsell, cross-selling, and reward features to the FunnelKit sliding side cart.
With this plugin, you can recommend related products every time a customer adds an item to their cart.
You can also create unique rewards such as coupon codes and free gifts, and then promote them inside the sliding cart.
FunnelKit can even track how much more the customer needs to spend, in order to unlock the next reward.
To add these powerful features, you’ll need to upgrade to FunnelKit Funnel Builder Pro. Just be aware that you’ll need the Plus or higher plan.
After buying a plan, log into your FunnelKit account. Here, you’ll find the FunnelKit Funnel Builder Pro plugin, plus FunnelKit Funnel Builder and FunnelKit Cart. You’ll need to install all three plugins to unlock the advanced sliding cart features.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the three plugins. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to FunnelKit » Settings and add your license key to the ‘FunnelKit Funnel Builder Pro’ field.
You can find this information by logging into your account on the FunnelKit website. With that done, click on ‘Activate.’
After that, simply go to FunnelKit » Cart.
You can now configure and customize the side cart by following the same process described in method 1. When you’re happy with how the sliding side cart is set up, you’re ready to add upsells, cross-sells, and rewards.
Get More Sales By Upselling and Cross-Selling WooCommerce Products
When a customer opens the sliding side cart, you can show them unique upsell and cross-sell promotions based on the items in their shopping basket.
Upselling is where you encourage shoppers to buy a higher-priced product instead of the one they already have in their shopping cart.
For example, imagine a customer adding a waterproof jacket to their cart. You might suggest a higher-quality jacket that’s more durable, versatile, and comes in different colors.
Cross-selling is where you promote a product that’s related to something the customer is already buying. For example, if they add a greeting card to their cart, then you might encourage them to buy chocolates or flowers too.
WooCommerce has a linked product feature that allows you to create upsells and cross-sells. For more information, please see our guide on how to upsell products in WooCommerce.
However, you can also create upsells and cross-sells directly from the FunnelKit dashboard. This is the quickest option, so it’s the one we’ll be using in this guide.
To start, click on the ‘Upsells’ option and then select ‘Enable Cart Upsells.’
After that, scroll to the ‘Upsells and Cross-Sells’ section.
Here, you’ll see all the products on your online store.
Simply click on the item where you want to add one or more linked products.
Then, click on either ‘Add Upsell’ or ‘Add Cross Sell’ depending on the kind of promotion you want to create.
In the popup, start typing the product that you want to use as the upsell or cross-sell. When the right product appears, give it a click.
To offer multiple products, simply follow the same process described above.
With that done, simply click on the ‘Add’ button.
You can now create unique cross-sell and upsell campaigns for every product in your store, simply by following the same process described above.
Now, you’re ready to customize how the upsell and cross-sell promotions will look on your sliding side cart.
To start, try switching between different styles by clicking the radio buttons next to ‘Display.’
The live preview will update automatically so you can try different styles to see which one you like the best.
By default, FunnelKit will show both upsells and cross-sells in the sliding side cart. If you prefer then you can show only upsells, or only cross-sells using the radio buttons in ‘Product Recommendation Type.’
Next, you can change the heading that FunnelKit shows above the upsell or cross-sell promotion by typing it into the ‘Heading’ field.
Just be aware that FunnelKit will use the same heading for both types of promotion.
After that, you can set the maximum number of suggested products that FunnelKit will show, by typing into the ‘Show Maximum Upsells’ field.
Wherever possible, it’s a good idea to create unique upsell and cross-sell promotions for every product. However, if your online store has lots of items then this might not be possible.
With that in mind, you can set a default upsell product that FunnelKit will promote when no linked products are available. To do this, simply type the name of a product into the ‘Default Upsells’ field. When the right product appears, give it a click.
When you’re happy with the upsell and cross-sell promotions you’ve created, don’t forget to click on ‘Save’ to store your changes.
Offer Free Shipping, Discounts, and Free Gifts
You can often increase the average order value by giving customers a reason to spend more. With that in mind, FunnelKit allows you to create various rewards and then promote them as unlockable bonuses in the sliding side cart.
For example, you might offer free shipping if the customer exceeds a minimum spend. FunnelKit will even show customers how much more they need to spend to unlock their prize.
This is an easy way to get more sales and build customer loyalty with gamification.
FunnelKit allows you to offer three different rewards: free shipping, a discount, and a free gift.
To offer free shipping, you’ll need to have already set up shipping in your WooCommerce store. For step-by-step instructions, please see our complete WooCommerce made simple guide.
Meanwhile, the ‘discount’ reward auto-applies a coupon when the customer reaches the minimum spend. If you want to offer this reward, then you’ll need to create a percentage discount coupon using either the built-in WooCommerce coupon feature or a WordPress coupon plugin.
For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to create smart coupons.
After that, you’re ready to create a reward by selecting ‘Rewards’ in the FunnelKit settings and then clicking on ‘Create Reward.’
You can now open the ‘Type’ dropdown and choose the kind of reward you want to create.
No matter whether you choose free gift, free shipping, or discount, you can change the text that FunnelKit shows to customers by typing into the ‘Message’ field.
If you do make any changes, then be careful not to edit {{remaining_amount}} as this allows FunnelKit to show how much more the customer needs to spend.
If you’re offering a discount, then make sure you change the message to show how much the customer will save.
With that done, type a number into the ‘Amount to Get Reward’ field. This is how much shoppers must spend, in order to unlock the reward.
If you’re offering a percentage discount, then you need to specify which coupon FunnelKit should auto-apply.
In the ‘Coupon’ field, start typing the coupon that you want to use. When the right code shows up, give it a click.
Now, FunnelKit will auto-apply the coupon when someone meets the minimum spend.
Offering a free gift instead? Then start typing the name of the gift into the ‘Product’ field.
When the right product shows up, give it a click.
Now, FunnelKit will add this item to the customer’s shopping cart as soon as they meet the minimum spend.
To add more rewards, simply click on ‘Create Another Reward.’
You can now configure the discount, free gift, or free shipping reward by following the same process described above.
By default, FunnelKit will show the following message once a customer qualifies for all the awards: ‘Congrats! You have unlocked all the rewards.’
To show a different message instead, simply type into the ‘When All Rewards Unlocked’ field. You might even offer the customer a special bonus for unlocking all your rewards, such as an exclusive coupon code to use on their next purchase.
When you’re happy with how your rewards are set up, click on the ‘Save’ button.
How To Publish Your Sliding Side Cart
When you’re ready to make the sliding side cart live, simply select the ‘Draft’ button next to ‘Cart.’ You can then click on ‘Publish.’
If you want to remove the sliding side cart at any point, then simply head back to FunnelKit » Cart in the WordPress dashboard. Then, click on the ‘Publish’ button and select ‘Draft.’
We hope this article helped you add a sliding side cart in WooCommerce. You may also want to check out our guide on how to create a WooCommerce popup to increase sales and the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Easily Add a Sliding Side Cart in WooCommerce first appeared on WPBeginner.
Do you want to learn how WordPress search works, and how you can make it better?
By understanding and improving the built-in WordPress search, you can help visitors find what they’re looking for. This can get you more conversions while keeping people on your site for longer.
In this article, we’ll look at how the default WordPress search works, and share tips on how to make it better.
WordPress comes with a search system that will look for content within your website.
How the search bar looks and where it appears will vary depending on your WordPress theme, but most themes show the search bar in the top right corner.
Note: If your theme doesn’t show the WordPress search bar by default, then skip ahead to our FAQs, where we’ll show you how to add it.
Visitors can type a search query into this field, and WordPress will search:
As you can see, it doesn’t search widgets, user comments, categories, tags, WooCommerce products, or PDF documents. It also doesn’t search image gallery titles, captions, or alt text, although you can search this content using a search engine plugin like SearchWP.
WordPress performs this search using the WP_Query class. It will start by displaying any posts that have the search term in the post title, arranged in reverse-chronological order, meaning that the newest entries will be displayed at the top of the results.
After that, it’ll show any posts that have the matching term in the post content.
For example, imagine you’ve just published a post about cats titled ‘My Favorite Pet’, and you also have an older post titled ‘Best Cat Photos.’ In this case, searching for ‘Cat’ will display the older ‘Best Cat Photos’ post first, since it has the search term in the title.
This may not a problem for WordPress blogs or websites that only have small amounts of content. However, this ordering logic will often show inaccurate or confusing results for bigger blogs, online stores, or business websites.
The built-in system is also missing some of the features that people expect from modern search engines. This includes autocomplete, live Ajax search, filtering, and spellcheck.
An advanced, fast, and accurate on-site search can help visitors find interesting and relevant content, which will keep them on your website for longer. This can increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress.
Since visitors are spending more time on your site, this will send positive signals to the search engines. This can improve your WordPress SEO, which means search engines like Google will show your content to more people and drive more visitors to your website.
For more information, please see our guide on how to increase your blog traffic.
People who are using your site’s internal search are already highly engaged. They’re actively looking for specific content, which may mean they’re ready to take actions such as buying a product, signing up to your WordPress membership site, or booking an appointment.
If these people can’t find what they’re looking for, they may give up and go to a different website. This means you’re losing out on visitors who were ready to convert.
A search results page is also an example of personalized content since you’re showing the visitor results that match their unique search query. By providing personalized content that’s accurate and helpful, you can improve the visitor experience. Once again, this can encourage them to convert.
Performance is another reason why it’s a good idea to replace the default WordPress search with a better alternative.
The larger your WordPress website gets, the longer it’ll take WP_Query to scan your database and get the results. This means your site’s search will get slower, as your website gets bigger.
On-site search helps visitors find what they’re looking for, including products to buy and interesting blogs to read. Since it’s such an important part of your site, it’s a bad idea to rely on the limited built-in WordPress search.
With that being said, let’s see how you can improve the native WordPress search.
Show Instant Results With Live Ajax Search
Live Ajax search adds a dropdown and autocomplete feature that’s common in search engines like Google.
As the user types, live search guesses what they want to search for and then shows them results without even reloading the page.
This can help visitors find the right content, without having to manually press the ‘Search’ button or wait for the page to reload.
The easiest way to add Ajax live search to WordPress is using the free SearchWP Live Ajax Lite Search plugin. It enables instant search automatically and there are no settings for you to configure, so it’s very easy to set up.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, the default WordPress search form will automatically use the Ajax live search feature. If you visit your site and start typing into the search bar, then you’ll see the instant search in action.
Change the Default Search URL Slug
By default, WordPress search URLs typically look something like this:
http://example.com/?s=search-term
The extra ?s= characters make this URL more difficult to read and understand, which can confuse visitors who are trying to find their way around your site.
Even worse, these URLs aren’t optimized for search engines which can stop them from correctly indexing your site’s contents.
The easiest way to change these URLs is by adding custom code to WordPress using a plugin such as WPCode.
You can go ahead and use the following custom code to replace the ‘/?s=search-term’ characters with ‘search.’ Your slug will look something like this when finished: http://example.com/search/wordpress
To use something other than ‘search’ in your URL, simply customize the code snippet below.
function wpb_change_search_url() {
if ( is_search() && ! empty( $_GET['s'] ) ) {
wp_redirect( home_url( "/search/" ) . urlencode( get_query_var( 's' ) ) );
exit();
}
}
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'wpb_change_search_url' );
For detailed instructions on how to insert this code to your WordPress website, please see our guide on how to change the default search URL slug in WordPress.
Make PDF Files Searchable in WordPress
By uploading PDFs to your WordPress website, you can share information about your services and products in a format that works on all devices. They’re also perfect for offering your visitors ebooks, user manuals, menus, and more.
However, WordPress only searches the contents of its database by default, so it will only look at the title and description of your PDF files, and not their contents. As a result, your visitors may struggle to find the best PDF for their search query.
The good news is that you can use a custom search plugin to improve the default WordPress search experience. If your PDFs are unencrypted, then the right search plugin will index the contents and metadata of your PDFs and add them to the search results.
For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to add PDF indexing and searching in WordPress.
Add a Search By Category Feature to WordPress
If you have multiple categories of content on your website, then you might want to let users restrict their search to a specific category. This can help visitors find the right content, faster.
For example, if you have an online store then it often makes sense to let customers search within a particular product category.
If you run a membership site, then you might use search by category to help visitors find other members, groups, forums, online courses, and other specific kinds of content. For more information, please see our guide on how to add search by category in WordPress.
Make a Smart WooCommerce Product Search
WooCommerce has its own built-in search, but it doesn’t look for matches in product attributes, reviews, or product descriptions. This omission can stop shoppers from finding products they want to buy on your online store, so you get fewer sales.
Luckily, there are some excellent WooCommerce plugins that can show more helpful search results, and fetch them faster. To learn more, please see our guide on how to make a smart WooCommerce product search.
To get even more sales, you may want to fine-tune the kind of products WooCommerce includes in its search results. For example, you might only show products that are on sale or come with free shipping.
To learn more, please see our guide on how to customize WooCommerce product search results page.
Create a Search Form for Custom Post Types
Custom post types allow you to go beyond posts and pages and create different content types for your website. Custom post types can have different custom fields and their own custom category structure.
For example, if you run a movie review website, then you would probably want to create a ‘movie reviews’ post type that has fields for the director, release date, and more.
At WPBeginner, we use custom post types for our Glossary section to keep it separate from our blog posts.
If you use custom post types, then you may want to create a form that allows visitors to search only that content.
For example, we also have a form that only searches WPBeginner’s coupon codes.
This can help visitors find the right content faster, even when you have lots of different content types. For step-by-step instructions, check out our guide on how to create advanced search forms in WordPress for custom post types.
You can also make custom fields searchable in WordPress, which is ideal if you’ve added extra metadata to your pages and posts.
Exclude Content From WordPress search
By default, the built-in WordPress search will include all posts and pages in its search results.
However, you may want to exclude certain pages and posts from the search results. For example, if you’re running a WordPress membership website or selling online courses, then you’ll typically want to exclude your premium content from public search results.
If you’re running an online store, then you may want to hide content like your account page, checkout page, and thank you page. To help you out, we’ve created a guide on how to exclude pages from the WordPress search results.
Do you want to exclude posts, authors, custom post types, categories, tags, or even custom taxonomies? Then you can take a look at our guide on how to exclude specific pages, authors, and more from WordPress search.
In this guide, we’ve explored how the default WordPress search works and shared lots of tips on how to improve it.
However, you may still have some questions about this important feature. That said, here are some of the most frequently asked questions about WordPress search.
How Do I Improve WordPress Search?
The best way to improve the built-in WordPress search is by using SearchWP.
SearchWP is the best custom search plugin for WordPress and allows visitors to search any content on your site including documents, WooCommerce products, custom fields, tags, comments, and more.
It also lets you customize the WordPress search algorithm, so you can control exactly where the content appears in the search results.
For more information, please see our guide on how to improve WordPress search.
Does WordPress Search Include Tags?
By default, WordPress search doesn’t include tags. The easiest way to make tags searchable is by using a custom search plugin like SearchWP.
SearchWP also has a relevancy slider, so you can control exactly how much tags influence where an item appears in the search results.
How Do I Add Search to My WordPress Theme?
If your theme doesn’t have a built-in search form, then we recommend adding a search bar to the WordPress navigation menu.
Since the main navigation menu typically appears across your entire site, visitors will be able to search for pages, posts, products, and more, from any page of your website.
If you’re using a block-based theme such as ThemeIsle’s Hestia Pro or Twenty Twenty-Three, then you can add a search bar to your theme using the full-site editor (FSE).
To do this, go to Appearance » Editor in the WordPress dashboard.
By default, the editor will show your theme’s home template. If you want to add the search bar to a different template, then click on the small arrow icon in the toolbar.
Then, select ‘Browse all templates.’
You’ll now see all the templates that make up your WordPress theme. Simply find the template where you want to add the search bar, and then click on its title.
For example, if you wanted to add a search form in your WordPress posts then you’d select the ‘Single’ template.
You will now see this template in the full-site editor.
To go ahead and add a search bar, click on the blue ‘+’ icon.
In the popup that appears, type in ‘Search’ to find the right block.
You can then drag the block to the location where you want to show the search bar.
To customize the block title or placeholder text, simply type it into the search block where it says ‘search’ or ‘optional placeholder.’
When you’re happy with how the block looks, click on ‘Save’ to make the search bar live.
How Do I Add Search to a WordPress Page or Post?
You can add a search bar to a specific page or post using the built-in Search block.
This is a good choice if you want to control exactly where the search bar appears on every page and post, or you only need to offer search on specific areas of your website.
To get started, simply open the page where you want to add a search form and then click on the + icon.
In the popup that appears, type ‘Search’ to find the right block. Once you click on the Search block, it will add the block to your page.
By default, the block uses ‘Search’ for both its label and the button text.
This will be visible to visitors, so you may want to replace it with something more descriptive by typing into the text fields.
You can also add some placeholder text to the search bar. This text will disappear automatically when the visitor starts typing.
To add a placeholder, simply click on ‘Optional placeholder…’ and then start typing.
When you’re happy with how the Search block looks, you can go ahead and either publish or update the post.
We hope this tutorial helped you learn how WordPress search works, and how to make it better. You may also want to learn how to make money online blogging with WordPress, or check out our list of the best email marketing services for small businesses.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How Does WordPress Search Work (+ Tips to Make It Better) first appeared on WPBeginner.
Mind maps can help you visually organize your ideas and information, streamline your development process, and facilitate collaboration. Here are six ways to speed up your WordPress web development process with mind mapping…
Professional web developers need to work smarter and faster to get things done and delivered on time and on budget. There are plenty of tools to help speed up your WordPress web development when building a website.
But what about tools to help you get your thinking organized before you actually start working on a project? How do you sort, filter and organize everything when there are so many different ideas and paths you can take in the initial stages of a project?
This is where mind mapping can help.
In this post, we look at different ways to use mind maps to get your web development projects done faster and with less costly distractions.
We’ll cover:
Mind mapping is a cognitive tool that helps you visually organize your thoughts and ideas, as well as make connections between them.
It is a graphical representation of information, typically starting with a central idea or concept and branching out into related topics or sub-topics.
The structure of a mind map is hierarchical, with the central idea serving as the main node from which other ideas radiate. These nodes are connected by lines, which represent relationships or associations between the ideas.
Mind maps can be used to brainstorm ideas, plan projects, outline information, or solve problems.
In addition, mind maps can include images, symbols, or colors to help emphasize or illustrate certain concepts.
All of these makes mind mapping a valuable tool to help organize your thinking during the initial stages of the web development process.
The benefits of using mind maps in your web development approach include:
Now that we understand some of the benefits, lets look at the practical application of using mind maps in your web development business.
Here are several ways to incorporate mind mapping into your website development approach:
Mind mapping can help you create a clear and organized structure for a website. By mapping out the website’s content and information architecture, you can easily see the relationships between pages and make sure the user flow is logical and intuitive.
For example, you can use mind maps to visualize the hierarchy of pages on your website, such as the homepage, service pages, blog page, etc.
In the above example, the central topic would be the website name, with each of the major sections (e.g. company, products and services, blog, FAQs, etc) branching out to subsections and individual pages of the website.
By mapping out the relationships between these pages, you can ensure that the user flow is easy to follow and that the website is organized in a way that makes sense to users.
Mind mapping can be a great tool for generating content ideas to match user intent. By brainstorming and organizing content ideas in a mind map, you can ensure that your website content is useful, accessible, and easy to interpret.
For example, you can use mind maps to generate content ideas for your website’s blog. By brainstorming topics that are relevant to your target audience and organizing them in a mind map, you can ensure that your content is aligned with user intent and will be useful to your website visitors.
Mind mapping can be a great tool for collaborating with clients and team members. By sharing a mind map, you can get feedback and input from others to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that the website development process is moving in the right direction.
For example, you can use mind maps to collaborate with clients and team members on website design and development. By sharing a mind map of the website’s content and information architecture, you can get valuable feedback on the user flow, content organization, and other aspects of the website development process.
You can use mind mapping to manage project tasks during the web development process. Creating a mind map of project tasks lets you quickly identify the key tasks that need to be completed and assign them to team members.
For example, you can use a mind map to assign tasks to team members, such as “Develop Home Page,” “Create About Us Page,” and “Design Contact Us Form.”
Mind mapping can help you save time and increase efficiency in the website development process. By visualizing the website structure and user flow in a mind map, you can identify areas for improvement and make changes before the website goes live, saving time and reducing the need for post-launch revisions.
For example, you can use mind maps to identify areas of the website that may be causing user frustration or confusion. By making changes to the website structure and user flow in the mind map, you can save time and ensure that the website is optimized for user experience before it goes live.
Using mind mapping is a versatile and effective technique to improve user experience on a website redesign, map out the ideal user flow for your website visitors, and make the website more user-friendly.
The mind map would include the key pages on the website, the various links and CTAs on each page, and the relationships between different pages. This helps your team understand how data is structured on the website.
By identifying the paths users typically take when navigating through a website and potential issues and areas where they may get stuck, you can make UX decisions to remove roadblocks and improve the user experience, and create a mind map of the target version of the website that is more user-friendly than the existing site. It also ensures that all stakeholders are on the same page throughout the project.
Let’s explore now some of the practical ways mind mapping can improve your web development processes.
As mentioned earlier, mind mapping can be used when creating new projects or improving existing websites.
Let’s start with improving an existing website.
To use mind mapping to improve user experience, follow these five simple steps:
First, create a mind-map template to understand the current information architecture on the website. List out how data is currently being structured and how you plan to structure it for the future user-friendly version.
Second, map out the ideal user flow by thinking about how you would like your website visitors to engage with your content and what actions you would like them to perform.
Third, compare the ideal user flow to the current behavior flow available on your Google Analytics. This will show you how users are currently engaging with the website’s content and what paths they usually take when navigating through the current information architecture.
Fourth, identify the roadblocks to providing the best user experience, such as poorly structured content, irrelevant features, or too many tools that don’t respond to users’ needs.
Finally, make the appropriate UX decisions to influence user behavior by turning chaos into a logical content hierarchy, trimming irrelevant page elements, and adapting web pages’ content structure to the needs of specific audience segments.
Creating a mind map is just the first step, but turning it into powerful UX decisions should be your main objective. You can turn your mind map into an effective sitemap or customer journey map.
To illustrate this, imagine you’re targeting three different customer personas on your website. You would need to plan three different user flows, grouping web pages into categories corresponding to each audience segment.
Then, do some user behavior mapping to determine how each customer persona should navigate to the corresponding web page and click the CTA placed there.
Make critical UX decisions, such as setting up relations between various pages on your website, designing the best CTA for each type of page, and including key information on a page, depending on the customer persona accessing it.
Now that we have looked at how to improve an existing website using mind mapping, let’s turn to using mind maps when creating new web development projects.
WPMU DEV member Lucas from Ondata Marketing shared with us how he uses mind mapping in his web development business to summarize the most important information gleaned from his client briefings.
Here’s what Lucas does, in his own words…
“First, the way to use the mind map is to insert a text or image in the middle, which can be the customer’s name, logo, niche or any other image that makes sense for use at that time.
After this first insertion, you start to draw lines from this highlighted center to another part of the sheet, then inserting another word or summary information, which can also have derivations (and maybe in this part you realize that you should have made the first derivative word less near the end of the sheet).
And after entering all the information, you would have leads, thought paths or subject groupings divided by the sheet, but all visible on the same page. And if all goes well, you will have a sheet where you can more clearly see the subject that the mind map was made and all your information and ideas derived from it.”
Lucas uses mindmaps to create websites in two ways:
The first way Lucas uses mind maps is for research:
“I put the topic in the middle, I go searching on the internet about the client’s company, about the niche it operates, about competitors or even listening to videos while I do other work tasks that are more automatic.
This is a mind map with less discretion, where I’m actually inserting anything and then, usually after a day or two, I’ll go over it and evaluate what still seems to make sense. And what happens is that generally about half of these things don’t make sense anymore to continue in the project as useful information.”
The other way Lucas uses mind maps is to summarize and organize the information gathered throughout the client briefing.
In his own words…
“After the client brief is done, I organize the information on paper and in my head. For that, I use a method that is to group some specific subjects in imaginary squares.
To explain it better: I imaginatively divide the mind map sheet into 9 squares, where the middle one is the text or image highlighted on the map, and the others are for other subjects. Using yet another analogy, it’s like using a hashtag #, where the middle is already filled with the theme.
And in the remaining 8 squares, I usually divide the insights and issues like this:
1 – Graphic references, font names, colors, branding rules. Simple things like drawing a square or a circle (which is one of the briefing questions I ask: “Think about shapes and images…â€.
2 – Tone of voice, personality, brand word, feelings you want to arouse.
3 – Products and services. Except, of course, when there are many, then I just insert a general description of all or categories.
In tables 4 to 8, it’s always something different for each client, but in general terms, I put phrases that the client said in the briefing, the actions that the client expects his end client to do when entering the site, the things that end customer has to know that makes the company different.
The point is that people do not always have the answers to every question, and the answers they may have are not always good for every question, but there will always be some precious jewels among them that your own customer will have said and that will surely also serve to delight your customer’s customer.”
Lucas also provide some essential rules for making a good mind map:
“First rule: there are no rules. Always try to adapt to what makes the most sense for you.
The second rule: don’t fully respect imaginary squares. For each customer, the amount of content will be different in each subject. There is no problem if a large part of the mind map is filled with some kind of content if that content is relevant.
The third rule: be concerned about making sense, but summarize as much as possible. Remember that the mind map is something to organize your thinking, so you should always make it easier to visualize it by writing highlighted words, short sentences, or even simple drawings.
And one last tip: personally I really prefer to use paper. There is something magical about putting ideas and notes down on paper with all the imperfections, misalignments and scrawls that your own fine motor skills can produce. But you can also use other online tools and methods, to do it directly or to clean it up, especially when you need to present it later, or where mind maps become too large to fit on one sheet.”
Speaking of tools, lets look now at some of the most popular mind map tools available.
Mind maps can be drawn by hand on paper or created using free or paid digital and online tools.
You can create mind maps using design and image editing tools like PowerPoint, Google Slides, Canva, VistaCreate, and others.
However, you can also use the dedicated free and paid mind-mapping tools below, which offer additional benefits over general drawing tools, such as specialized functions, collaborative features, integration with other tools, better organization, more customization, and better visualization options:
Mind Map Pro is a powerful tool for mind mapping that offers various perspectives, such as map view, tree view, and 3D view.
Its user interface is user-friendly, and it has a simple process to get started. The color and shade of ideas can be changed using the color picker, and the size of idea boxes can be adjusted automatically or manually. Keyboard shortcuts are available to make mind mapping easier, and background images can be moved around the canvas by dragging and dropping. Zoom in and out using icons or a mouse scroll is also available.
Moving ideas and changing their relationships can be done by dragging and dropping, and additional associative links between ideas can be created. Contextual labels can also be added. The doodles can be exported to an Office document or an image, and the mind map can be kept private or public.
Mind Map Pro has a plugin to build a visual sitemap for your website, allowing you to drag-and-drop pages to edit your site’s structure and rearrange the architecture of your site. It can also connect with WordPress, allowing you to stay on track with tasks from your dashboard. You can add tasks from your dashboard or directly from a post or page.
Overall, Mind Map Pro is a versatile tool that can help you explore your ideas in different ways.
MindMup is an easy-to-use online mind-mapping tool. You can create mind maps for free without registering and export your mind maps as images or an outline document.
The free version offers a number of customizable features but limited capacity. The paid version options includes many additional features and increased capabilities.
MindMeister is a web-based collaborative mind mapping tool with a range of powerful features and versatile tools to help you organize, plan and execute your projects.
MindMeister lets you easily create to-do lists, website planning sheets, and arrange team assignments. The app also allows you to share the workspace online or via mobile devices like Android and iOS, and create email reminders for tasks.
Collaboration is made easy with MindMeister’s cloud-based platform. The “Opinions” feature, lets you get feedback from your team in real-time. Collaborators can vote “yay” or “nay” to individual nodes in your shared mind map and you can divvy up the work via drag-and-drop if you use MeisterTask to manage your projects.
MindMeister offers several different plans and a range of premade templates to help guide you in getting started with your own mind map. The free basic plan supports up to three mind maps at no cost. If you need more and additional features like including multiple users, custom themes, branding, multiple admins, custom domains, or group sharing, then you’ll need to upgraid to one of its paid plans.
MindNode is a popular and easy-to-use and versatile mind-mapping software available for Mac and Apple iOS devices. It offers a simple and intuitive user interface, which makes it a great option for both beginners and experienced users. With quick entry features, you can start creating your mind map within seconds, allowing you to capture your ideas and thoughts on the go.
One of the best things about MindNode is that it allows you to create simple or elaborate mind maps, making it perfect for brainstorming sessions or organizing your daily tasks. You can even use it to set priorities, make to-do lists, or create annual goals. And with its syncing capability with Apple Watch, iPad, or iPhone, you can access your mind maps on the go, no matter where you are.
MindNode also offers import/export features, which make it an ideal tool to integrate with your workflow. With the ability to attach images, links, and files to your mind map, you can easily visualize and organize your ideas in one central location. And with the ability to fold nodes and use focus mode, you can easily manage complex mind maps without getting lost in the details.
Xmind is a powerful mind-mapping software that offers a range of features to create clear, concise, and customizable mind maps for brainstorming ideas, managing a project, or simply organizing your thoughts. It’s available for Mac, Windows, and iOS.
One of the key features of XMind is the Zen mode, which allows you to focus on a single mind map without any distractions. This feature is especially useful for when you need to concentrate on your thoughts and ideas without any external interference. In addition, XMind also has an equation feature that lets you add mathematical and chemical equations to your mind maps.
With XMind, you have access to a wide range of mind map templates that are designed to suit various needs. The multi-branch colors also help you to identify different nodes, making it easy to navigate your mind maps.
XMind allows you to protect your mind map files with passwords, ensuring that your data is safe and secure. It offers a smooth workflow, responsive graphics engine, distraction-free mode, and all the basic features you need to create and format mind maps. You can also export your mind maps as PNG, PDF, or markdown files, which makes sharing and collaborating with others easy. The mobile app for iOS and Android devices is also available, allowing you to work on your mind maps while on the go.
XMind lets you create mind maps easily using just the keyboard, and there are plenty of formatting options available. The themes and templates are attractive and allow you to jump-start your mind map. XMind also provides a range of useful project management and reference features, including task-based icons, adding notes and file attachments, and hyperlinks to web pages and mind map nodes. The Pro version adds even more features.
XMind is a subscription-based app for personal use, which may not suit everyone. Additionally, there is no cloud sync between devices.
Miro is a collaborative online whiteboarding platform that includes a mind mapping feature. The mind mapping software allows you to visually organize and connect ideas in a non-linear format, making it easy to brainstorm, plan projects, and solve problems.
With Miro, you can create and customize mind maps with text, images, and icons, and collaborate in real-time with other team members. The platform also includes features such as comments, voting, and tagging, which make it easy to gather feedback and keep track of important ideas.
Miro is designed for use by teams of all sizes, and can be integrated with a variety of other tools and platforms to streamline workflow and boost productivity.
Coggle is a web-based mind mapping tool that lets you map out complex processes, connect related ideas, and visualize information with intuitive controls and features for creating, sharing, and collaboration.
Coggle’s drag-and-drop interface lets you add images and text anywhere on the canvas to annotate and organize your map. The software’s advanced features give you complete control over connection paths and styles, enabling you to create loops, join branches, and add multiple central items as starting points to map related topics together in one workspace.
With real-time collaboration and a built-in chat tool, Coggle is a great tool for teams to communicate and co-create diagrams simultaneously, without the need to log in. Plus, Coggle’s change history feature automatically saves all changes, so you can revert to a previous version from any point.
Coggle works seamlessly with Google services, making it easy to share files and collaborate with colleagues using Google accounts. Its template gallery also provides access to pre-built, customizable templates for setting SMART targets, root cause analysis, meeting notes, and more.
While Coggle’s web app interface does not offer all the full-featured native apps’ capabilities, such as themes, images, presentation, and brainstorming mode, its simple and intuitive design, floating text and images, and lively color scheme make it a cool and fun tool to work with. You can even use your smartphone to create or edit mind maps on the go.
Mind-mapping is a flexible and adaptable tool that can help your web development business in many ways… from note-taking and brainstorming new ideas for websites and content creation to project planning, problem-solving, and decision-making.
There are various tools available to help you create mind maps that will speed up your web development, make your work more efficient, and help you communicate your ideas to clients more easily.
We hope this article has inspired you to expand your mind and map out new approaches to building a better web development business.
***
A special thank you to Lucas from ON|Data Marketing for his contribution to this post. ON|Data helps companies to position themselves professionally and creatively on the internet through WordPress websites.
Do you want to learn how to password-protect your WordPress admin directory?
Adding another layer of password protection to your WordPress admin directory can be a great way to improve your WordPress security.
In this article, you’ll learn how you can password-protect your wp-admin directory easily.
By password-protecting your WordPress admin directory, you improve the security of the most important entry point to your WordPress website.
Your WordPress admin dashboard is the central hub of your site. It’s where you’ll publish posts and pages, customize your theme, install WordPress plugins, and more.
Often, when hackers try to get into your website, they’ll do it through the wp-admin screen. You can help to protect your website against potential attacks by using a secure password and limiting login attempts.
To be even more secure, you can also password-protect the wp-admin directory. Then when someone attempts to access your admin area, they’ll need to enter a username and password before they ever make it to the WordPress login screen.
With that said, let’s take a look at how you can password-protect your WordPress admin directory step by step.
The first method is recommended for most users, and you can use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.
The easiest way to password-protect your WordPress admin directory is by using your WordPress hosting provider’s Directory Privacy app.
First, you need to log in to your hosting account dashboard and click on the ‘Directory Privacy’ option in the Files section of your website’s advanced settings.
Note: Most web hosts using cPanel, like Bluehost, will have similar steps. However, your dashboard might be slightly different from our screenshots depending on your hosting provider.
This brings you to a screen that lists all of the different directories on your server. You need to find the folder that contains your website files.
For most website owners, this can be found by clicking on the ‘public_html’ folder.
This brings up all of the website files you’ve installed on your server.
Next, you’ll need to click on the folder with your website’s domain name.
In that folder, you’ll see a ‘wp-admin’ folder.
Instead of clicking the folder name, you’ll need to click the ‘Edit’ button next to that folder.
This brings you to a screen where you can turn on password protection.
Simply check the box that says ‘Password protect this directory’. If you like, you can also give your directory a name like ‘Admin Area’ to help you remember.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to click the ‘Save’ button.
This will take you to a page where the confirmation message will appear.
Now you’ll need to click the ‘Go Back’ button and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can create a user that will be able to access this directory.
You will be asked to enter a username and password, and then confirm the password. Make sure to note your username and password in a safe place, such as a password manager app.
Make sure you click the ‘Save’ button when you’ve done that.
Now, when someone tries to access your wp-admin directory, they will be prompted to enter the username and password you created above.
You can also password-protect your WordPress admin directory manually. To do this you’ll need to create two files called .htpasswd and .htaccess.
Note: Adding any code to your website can be dangerous. Even a small mistake can cause major errors on your site. We only recommend this method for advanced users.
Creating the .htaccess File
First, open up your preferred text editor and name the new file .htaccess.
After that, you need to copy the following code snippet and add it to the file.
AuthName "Admins Only"
AuthUserFile /home/user/public_html/example.com/wp-admin/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthType basic
require user yourusername
Make sure you change the ‘AuthUserFile’ path to the location where you’ll upload the .htpasswd file and change ‘yourusername’ to the username you want to use to log in.
Don’t forget to save the file when you’re finished.
Creating the .htpasswd File
Once you’ve done that, you need to create a .htpasswd file.
To do this, open up a text editor and create a file called .htpasswd. This file will list your username along with your password in an encrypted format.
The easiest way to generate the encrypted password is with a htpasswd generator.
Simply enter your username and password, select the encryption format, and click the ‘Create .htpasswd file’ button.
The htpasswd generator will display a line of text that you need to paste into your .htpasswd file. Make sure you save the file once you’ve done that.
Uploading .htaccess and .htpasswd to the wp-admin Directory
The last step is to upload both of the files you created to your website’s wp-admin folder.
You will need to connect to your WordPress hosting account using an FTP client or the online file manager tool provided by your hosting provider. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to use FTP to upload files to WordPress.
For this tutorial, we’ll use FileZilla because it’s free and works on both Mac and Windows.
Once you have connected to your website, you will see the files on your computer in the left window, and the files on your website in the right. On the left, you need to navigate to the location where you saved the .htaccess and .htpasswd files.
Then on the right, you need to go to the wp-admin directory for the website you wish to protect. Most users will need to double-click the ‘public_html’ folder, then the folder with their domain name, then the ‘wp-admin’ folder.
Now you can select the two files on the left and click ‘Upload’ from the right-click menu or simply drag the files onto the left window.
Now your ‘wp-admin’ directory will be password protected.
Depending on how your server and website are set up, there’s a chance you might run into errors. These errors can be fixed by carefully adding code to your .htaccess file.
Note: This is the .htaccess file located in your main website folder, not the one you uploaded to the ‘wp-admin’ folder. If you’re having trouble finding it, then see our guide on why you can’t find .htaccess and how to locate it.
Fixing the Ajax Not Working Error
One of the most common errors is that Ajax functionality may stop working on the front end of your site. If you have WordPress plugins that require Ajax, such as live Ajax search or Ajax contact forms, then you will notice that these plugins won’t work anymore.
To fix this, simply add the following code to the .htaccess file that’s located in your ‘wp-admin’ folder.
<Files admin-ajax.php>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Satisfy any
</Files>
Fixing the 404 Error and Too Many Redirects Error
Two other errors you might run into are the 404 error and the too many redirects error.
The simplest way to fix them is to open up your main .htaccess file located in your website directory and add the following line of code before the WordPress rules.
ErrorDocument 401 default
We hope this article helped you learn how to password-protect your WordPress admin (wp-admin) directory. You may also want to see our expert picks of the best email marketing services for small businesses and our guide on how to get a free email domain.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Password Protect Your WordPress Admin (wp-admin) Directory first appeared on WPBeginner.
Would you like to move qualified prospects through your web dev sales process more successfully, deliver consistently better results, and send your sales closing rates soaring? Of course you would, right?!
Well, good news – you’re in the right place to learn how! This no-hype guide to running a hyper successful client briefing session will show you how to boost sales of your web development services.
We’ll cover the following topics:
Q: Which of the following is an absolutely essential “must-have” to conduct a highly successful client briefing session?
A) A fancy office on the top floor of a skyscraper overlooking one of the 7 wonders of the world.
B) Sending out a stretch limo to pick up your prospective clients and drive them back after the briefing.
C) Serving clients chilled champagne, canapes, and caviar as soon as they arrive.
D) Having an impeccable sense of dress matching your suit with your hairstyle and the office decor.
Answer: None of the above.
To conduct a successful client briefing session, you need only two ears and …
A Needs Assessment Questionnaire (NAQ) is an essential tool for your WordPress web development services business.
It’s a crucial part of an effective sales process as it helps you to:
Your questionnaire should be carefully crafted to glean the necessary information from the client while being concise and easy to understand.
It should also be customized to the client’s specific needs and provide clear instructions on how to complete it correctly, so that anyone in your business can conduct a client briefing session successfully.
By demonstrating a deep understanding of the client’s needs and goals, you can create a website or deliver a project that will hopefully exceed your client’s expectations. This, in turn, can lead to satisfied clients who are more likely to recommend your services to others.
The NAQ, then, is not just any old “questionnaire.” It’s an integral and valuable part of your sales process.
So, before we look at how to develop an effective Needs Assessment Questionnaire that will help you get better results in your business, let’s briefly go over the different stages of an effective sales system so we can have a clear understanding of where the Needs Assessment Questionnaire fits in.
An effective sales process typically consists of the following stages:
The sales process described above emphasizes the importance of understanding your client’s needs and providing a solution that meets those needs. It also highlights the need for ongoing customer engagement and relationship-building to drive long-term business success.
Your NAQ is vitally important to completing Stage 2 (Needs Assessment) of your sales process successfully.
This article focuses on the Needs Assessment stage of the sales process, so let’s take an in-depth look at the role your Needs Assessment Questionnaire plays in it.
All you need to run an effective sales presentation is an effective script and an effective sales tool.
To illustrate this, let’s say that you are asked to give a slide presentation to an audience about a subject you know little to nothing about.
If you design your slide presentation well using the right content and the right slide sequence, all you would have to do is show a slide, read the words on the slide, show the next slide and repeat the process, and you could run a successful presentation.
More importantly, anyone in your business could consistently and repeatedly deliver a successful presentation by simply following the same process. Even if you went a little off-topic and ad-libbed every now and then, the tool (i.e. the slides) and its built-in script (i.e. the words on each slide) would still guide the presenter successfully through the entire process.
This is essentially what we are aiming to achieve in “Stage 2” of the sales system… an effective and repeatable presentation that delivers consistent results and moves your client successfully to the next stage.
Stage 2, then, is your Needs Analysis Presentation and consists of two main elements:
The “presentation script” is what you say and do during your client briefing session to create the best user experience possible for your client.
This includes how you greet your potential client, what you do to make them feel comfortable (e.g. offer water, tea, or coffee), the words you use to start the briefing session, the questions you ask them during the briefing, how you structure the entire meeting so clients feel relaxed and open to share information that will allow you to assess their needs and qualify them as prospects, the words you use to end the meeting and set up the next stage of the process, and so on.
For example, the “opening script” for your Needs Analysis Presentation might go something like this:
“[Client name], as I mentioned to you when setting the appointment, the purpose of today’s meeting is for us to get a better idea of your business, what it does, what problems you need help solving, what kind of results you expect from your website, and so on.
I’ve done some research on your business and there are some questions I’d like to ask so we can get the full picture of what you need and how we can help you. This will probably take about 30 minutes or so.
I will then review the information carefully with my team and come back to you with a customized solution that will best suit your needs and your budget.
And if it turns out that we are not a perfect fit for working with each other, I’ll let you know and recommend a more suitable solution.
Are you ok for us to get started?”
***
After delivering the opening script above, you then complete the Needs Assessment Questionnaire with your client. This is the tool that will guide you successfully through your Needs Analysis Presentation.
After completing your NAQ, you then deliver the “closing script,” which could be something like this:
“[Client name], thank you… I really appreciate you taking the time to answer all of these questions. This gives me everything I need.
As I mentioned at the start of the meeting, give me a day or so to review this with my team. We’ll put together the solution we think will best deliver what you’re looking for and then we’ll meet again and go through everything in detail and answer any other questions you have.
Are you happy for us to set up the next meeting now?”
The above is Stage 2 in a nutshell. Its purpose is to help you set up the next appointment, where you deliver your solution and hopefully get the client’s business.
The more attention you put into designing and structuring your Needs Assessment Questionnaire, the better the client’s experience will be and the more smoothly, consistently, and effectively your client meetings will run.
Even better, if you plan to scale your business, you will be able to train anyone to run client briefings competently. All they will need to do is learn the opening and closing scripts and use the Needs Assessment Questionnaire to complete this stage.
Now that we understand what the Needs Assessment Questionnaire’s purpose is and where it fits into the sales process, let’s start building an effective NAQ for your business.
Since there is no “one size fits all” way to build a web development business, this section will provide a general framework to help you design a Needs Assessment Questionnaire customized to suit your specific needs, with a list of sections and suggested questions you can include in your NAQ.
We’ll begin by looking at the steps involved in creating a NAQ.
Here are the steps involved in creating an effective Needs Assessment Questionnaire that will enable you to gather the critical information needed to deliver successful WordPress web development services to your clients:
So that’s the outline of the process. Now, let’s start putting a Needs Assessment Questionnaire together.
As mentioned above, the first step is to identify the key areas of information you need to gather from clients.
Mind-mapping the process at this stage can be useful for brainstorming ideas and organizing your thoughts.
Once you have a clear idea of what information you need from your client, the next step is to organize this information into question categories. These will form the main sections of your NAQ.
Think about the logical flow of your questionnaire’s sections, especially when planning subcategories, such as hosting and domains, design, functionality, and content for the website, or marketing-related questions.
For example, when discussing your client’s website needs, should you start by asking them questions about hosting and domains and then follow with questions about design, functionality, and content, or is there are better sequence that you feel would make the discussion flow more smoothly?
Also, consider things like:
All of these details are very important when building a process flow for your NAQ’s design.
How are you going to run your Needs Analysis Presentation and record the client’s answers?
Will your client briefing sessions be done face-to-face, over the phone, online via video conferencing, or a combination of different styles?
Will your NAQ be printed with answers recorded as handwritten notes, in an electronic document, or a custom form application running from a phone, tablet, or laptop?
Probably the easiest and most effective way to start is using pen and paper. A printed questionnaire can serve as your prototype. This will allow you to review, tweak, test, and improve your sections, questions, question flow, accompanying instructions, fields for entering answers, etc, after every client briefing session.
Once you have a NAQ that delivers you consistent results, you can then turn your prototype into a format better suited for your business, like an electronic questionnaire or even an app. Or, just keep using a printed questionnaire if it works for you. Why complicate something when the simplest approach works?
Now that you have planned everything out, the next step is to add questions to each section of your NAQ.
Note: You don’t have to add every suggested question below to your NAQ. Just pick out the ones you need. Also, keep in mind that some questions may overlap for different sections, so include them where you think it would make the most sense for you to ask.
Let’s go over the main sections we suggest you consider including in your NAQ:
Your NAQ is an internal business document. It’s not something that you will leave with the client. So, it’s probably a good idea to add an Overview section. This could include a checklist of everything you need to cover during the session, such as documents or information the client needs to provide, instructions for completing certain sections, even your opening script.
As a website developer, it’s important to understand the client’s business goals and challenges to create a website that meets their specific needs. During the client briefing session, it’s essential to ask the right questions to identify the client’s goals, target audience, unique selling points, and competition.
Questions about the client’s goals can include inquiries about what they hope to achieve with their website, whether they are looking to increase sales, generate leads, or increase brand awareness. Knowing the client’s goals will help you tailor your approach to meet these objectives.
Target audience questions should delve into the demographics of the client’s customers, their interests and behaviors, and what they are looking for in a website. By understanding the target audience, you can create a website that appeals to their audience’s needs and preferences.
Unique selling point questions can help you understand what sets the client’s business apart from the competition. This information will help you highlight these unique selling points on the website and create a competitive advantage for the client.
Finally, questions about the competition can help you understand what other businesses are offering and how the client’s website can differentiate itself. This information will help you create a website that stands out from the competition and attracts more customers to the client’s business.
Here is a list of questions you can include in this section of your NAQ:
Prefill some of these details before your client briefing and ask the client to confirm these:
Note: Some of this information may need to be asked or obtained at a later stage of the sales process if applicable (e.g. Revenue, Tax ID, Payment information).
Your Needs Assessment Questionnaire should take into account the fact that a potential client may or may not already have an existing website. If so, it is essential to conduct a thorough assessment of the client’s existing website. This will help you understand their website, identify any issues that need to be addressed, and ensure that the end product is tailored to their specific needs and goals.
Here is a list of questions to ask a potential client during the client briefing session about their website to help you gain a comprehensive understanding of their needs and requirements in terms of functionality, design, content, and performance:
For existing websites, include the following questions:
For existing websites, include the following questions:
For existing websites, include the following questions:
For existing websites, include the following questions:
Also…
If content services are part of your offering, see the additional “Content Marketing” section below for more questions you can ask.
By understanding your client’s marketing efforts, you can ensure that the website you create for them will be optimized for success.
For example, you can ask about the client’s SEO efforts, including any past keyword research or optimization. It is also important to understand any PPC campaigns the client has run, as well as their social media presence and email marketing efforts. Additionally, you can inquire about any PR campaigns the client has been a part of, including media outlets they have been featured in and soundbites from their representatives.
Here is a list of questions you could ask a potential client during the client briefing session to identify their marketing efforts related to SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing, PR, etc:
Also…
Access to platforms:
Access to documents:
The success of a WordPress website is heavily dependent on the quality and relevance of its content. As a result, it’s important to understand the client’s content needs and preferences during the needs analysis. Understanding the client’s content preferences can help the web developer to create a website that aligns with the client’s brand identity and resonates with the target audience.
In addition to gleaning information about your client’s marketing efforts and goals using channels like paid advertising, social media, etc, understanding the client’s content needs and preferences is crucial for the success of their project.
During the needs analysis, it’s important to ask the client about the types of content they want to create and publish on their website. This could include blog posts, videos, infographics, and more. Additionally, the web developer should inquire about the topics that the client wants to cover, the frequency at which they want to publish content, and the overall tone and voice that they want to convey.
Here are some questions you can ask during the client briefing session to gain a better understanding of the client’s content marketing needs and preferences and create a website that supports those goals:
Before starting any project, it is crucial to set clear expectations for the budget and timeline.
Asking the right questions about the client’s budget and their timeline expectations during the briefing session will help you and your client understand the scope of the project and plan accordingly to ensure the success of the web development project.
Here are some questions you can ask a potential client to gain a better understanding of their budget constraints, project scope, and timeline expectations to create a proposal tailored to their needs and budget:
Create a space in your questionnaire for additional notes. Use this space to record your own thoughts, observations, contact names, things your client says that you can quote, etc.
The Needs Analysis Presentation is an integral part of your overall sales process. Getting your presentation scripts and Needs Assessment Questionnaire right are vitally important.
But so is what you do before and after this stage.
Let’s look at what you can do to maximize the results from your client briefing sessions.
Here are the steps you should take before conducting your client briefing session to ensure that you are well-prepared and can conduct a successful needs analysis that will lead to a customized solution for your client’s website and marketing needs:
After conducting your needs analysis presentation with a potential client, make sure to complete the following steps to maximize your results:
Depending on how you structure your sales process, you may also want to:
Finally, you have asked clients lots of questions about their business, so be prepared if clients have some questions about your business.
As a WordPress web developer, one of the most important steps you can take to ensure the success of your projects is to conduct a thorough needs analysis with your clients. This will help you understand your client’s business, goals, existing website, marketing efforts, content needs, budget, and timeline.
Asking the right questions during the client briefing process is crucial for delivering the best solution that will not only meet their needs and budget, but hopefully also exceed their expectations.
Using a needs analysis tool like a Needs Assessment Questionnaire can save you valuable time during the client briefing and in the process of qualifying prospects for your business.
Additionally, it can help your business to identify potential roadblocks and challenges upfront, allowing you to develop a strategy that addresses these before they become a problem, keep your project on track, on budget, and on time, create customized WordPress solutions tailored to your clients’ unique needs, goals, and challenges, and establish a strong relationship with your client that can lead to repeat business, referrals, and long-term partnerships.
We hope you have found this information useful. Apply it to your business and watch your sales results improve!
Would you like to move qualified prospects through your web dev sales process more successfully, deliver consistently better results, and send your sales closing rates soaring? Of course you would, right?!
Well, good news – you’re in the right place to learn how! This no-hype guide to running a hyper successful client briefing session will show you how to boost sales of your web development services.
We’ll cover the following topics:
Q: Which of the following is an absolutely essential “must-have” to conduct a highly successful client briefing session?
A) A fancy office on the top floor of a skyscraper overlooking one of the 7 wonders of the world.
B) Sending out a stretch limo to pick up your prospective clients and drive them back after the briefing.
C) Serving clients chilled champagne, canapes, and caviar as soon as they arrive.
D) Having an impeccable sense of dress matching your suit with your hairstyle and the office decor.
Answer: None of the above.
To conduct a successful client briefing session, you need only two ears and …
A Needs Assessment Questionnaire (NAQ) is an essential tool for your WordPress web development services business.
It’s a crucial part of an effective sales process as it helps you to:
Your questionnaire should be carefully crafted to glean the necessary information from the client while being concise and easy to understand.
It should also be customized to the client’s specific needs and provide clear instructions on how to complete it correctly, so that anyone in your business can conduct a client briefing session successfully.
By demonstrating a deep understanding of the client’s needs and goals, you can create a website or deliver a project that will hopefully exceed your client’s expectations. This, in turn, can lead to satisfied clients who are more likely to recommend your services to others.
The NAQ, then, is not just any old “questionnaire.” It’s an integral and valuable part of your sales process.
So, before we look at how to develop an effective Needs Assessment Questionnaire that will help you get better results in your business, let’s briefly go over the different stages of an effective sales system so we can have a clear understanding of where the Needs Assessment Questionnaire fits in.
An effective sales process typically consists of the following stages:
The sales process described above emphasizes the importance of understanding your client’s needs and providing a solution that meets those needs. It also highlights the need for ongoing customer engagement and relationship-building to drive long-term business success.
Your NAQ is vitally important to completing Stage 2 (Needs Assessment) of your sales process successfully.
This article focuses on the Needs Assessment stage of the sales process, so let’s take an in-depth look at the role your Needs Assessment Questionnaire plays in it.
All you need to run an effective sales presentation is an effective script and an effective sales tool.
To illustrate this, let’s say that you are asked to give a slide presentation to an audience about a subject you know little to nothing about.
If you design your slide presentation well using the right content and the right slide sequence, all you would have to do is show a slide, read the words on the slide, show the next slide and repeat the process, and you could run a successful presentation.
More importantly, anyone in your business could consistently and repeatedly deliver a successful presentation by simply following the same process. Even if you went a little off-topic and ad-libbed every now and then, the tool (i.e. the slides) and its built-in script (i.e. the words on each slide) would still guide the presenter successfully through the entire process.
This is essentially what we are aiming to achieve in “Stage 2” of the sales system… an effective and repeatable presentation that delivers consistent results and moves your client successfully to the next stage.
Stage 2, then, is your Needs Analysis Presentation and consists of two main elements:
The “presentation script” is what you say and do during your client briefing session to create the best user experience possible for your client.
This includes how you greet your potential client, what you do to make them feel comfortable (e.g. offer water, tea, or coffee), the words you use to start the briefing session, the questions you ask them during the briefing, how you structure the entire meeting so clients feel relaxed and open to share information that will allow you to assess their needs and qualify them as prospects, the words you use to end the meeting and set up the next stage of the process, and so on.
For example, the “opening script” for your Needs Analysis Presentation might go something like this:
“[Client name], as I mentioned to you when setting the appointment, the purpose of today’s meeting is for us to get a better idea of your business, what it does, what problems you need help solving, what kind of results you expect from your website, and so on.
I’ve done some research on your business and there are some questions I’d like to ask so we can get the full picture of what you need and how we can help you. This will probably take about 30 minutes or so.
I will then review the information carefully with my team and come back to you with a customized solution that will best suit your needs and your budget.
And if it turns out that we are not a perfect fit for working with each other, I’ll let you know and recommend a more suitable solution.
Are you ok for us to get started?”
***
After delivering the opening script above, you then complete the Needs Assessment Questionnaire with your client. This is the tool that will guide you successfully through your Needs Analysis Presentation.
After completing your NAQ, you then deliver the “closing script,” which could be something like this:
“[Client name], thank you… I really appreciate you taking the time to answer all of these questions. This gives me everything I need.
As I mentioned at the start of the meeting, give me a day or so to review this with my team. We’ll put together the solution we think will best deliver what you’re looking for and then we’ll meet again and go through everything in detail and answer any other questions you have.
Are you happy for us to set up the next meeting now?”
The above is Stage 2 in a nutshell. Its purpose is to help you set up the next appointment, where you deliver your solution and hopefully get the client’s business.
The more attention you put into designing and structuring your Needs Assessment Questionnaire, the better the client’s experience will be and the more smoothly, consistently, and effectively your client meetings will run.
Even better, if you plan to scale your business, you will be able to train anyone to run client briefings competently. All they will need to do is learn the opening and closing scripts and use the Needs Assessment Questionnaire to complete this stage.
Now that we understand what the Needs Assessment Questionnaire’s purpose is and where it fits into the sales process, let’s start building an effective NAQ for your business.
Since there is no “one size fits all” way to build a web development business, this section will provide a general framework to help you design a Needs Assessment Questionnaire customized to suit your specific needs, with a list of sections and suggested questions you can include in your NAQ.
We’ll begin by looking at the steps involved in creating a NAQ.
Here are the steps involved in creating an effective Needs Assessment Questionnaire that will enable you to gather the critical information needed to deliver successful WordPress web development services to your clients:
So that’s the outline of the process. Now, let’s start putting a Needs Assessment Questionnaire together.
As mentioned above, the first step is to identify the key areas of information you need to gather from clients.
Mind-mapping the process at this stage can be useful for brainstorming ideas and organizing your thoughts.
Once you have a clear idea of what information you need from your client, the next step is to organize this information into question categories. These will form the main sections of your NAQ.
Think about the logical flow of your questionnaire’s sections, especially when planning subcategories, such as hosting and domains, design, functionality, and content for the website, or marketing-related questions.
For example, when discussing your client’s website needs, should you start by asking them questions about hosting and domains and then follow with questions about design, functionality, and content, or is there are better sequence that you feel would make the discussion flow more smoothly?
Also, consider things like:
All of these details are very important when building a process flow for your NAQ’s design.
How are you going to run your Needs Analysis Presentation and record the client’s answers?
Will your client briefing sessions be done face-to-face, over the phone, online via video conferencing, or a combination of different styles?
Will your NAQ be printed with answers recorded as handwritten notes, in an electronic document, or a custom form application running from a phone, tablet, or laptop?
Probably the easiest and most effective way to start is using pen and paper. A printed questionnaire can serve as your prototype. This will allow you to review, tweak, test, and improve your sections, questions, question flow, accompanying instructions, fields for entering answers, etc, after every client briefing session.
Once you have a NAQ that delivers you consistent results, you can then turn your prototype into a format better suited for your business, like an electronic questionnaire or even an app. Or, just keep using a printed questionnaire if it works for you. Why complicate something when the simplest approach works?
Now that you have planned everything out, the next step is to add questions to each section of your NAQ.
Note: You don’t have to add every suggested question below to your NAQ. Just pick out the ones you need. Also, keep in mind that some questions may overlap for different sections, so include them where you think it would make the most sense for you to ask.
Let’s go over the main sections we suggest you consider including in your NAQ:
Your NAQ is an internal business document. It’s not something that you will leave with the client. So, it’s probably a good idea to add an Overview section. This could include a checklist of everything you need to cover during the session, such as documents or information the client needs to provide, instructions for completing certain sections, even your opening script.
As a website developer, it’s important to understand the client’s business goals and challenges to create a website that meets their specific needs. During the client briefing session, it’s essential to ask the right questions to identify the client’s goals, target audience, unique selling points, and competition.
Questions about the client’s goals can include inquiries about what they hope to achieve with their website, whether they are looking to increase sales, generate leads, or increase brand awareness. Knowing the client’s goals will help you tailor your approach to meet these objectives.
Target audience questions should delve into the demographics of the client’s customers, their interests and behaviors, and what they are looking for in a website. By understanding the target audience, you can create a website that appeals to their audience’s needs and preferences.
Unique selling point questions can help you understand what sets the client’s business apart from the competition. This information will help you highlight these unique selling points on the website and create a competitive advantage for the client.
Finally, questions about the competition can help you understand what other businesses are offering and how the client’s website can differentiate itself. This information will help you create a website that stands out from the competition and attracts more customers to the client’s business.
Here is a list of questions you can include in this section of your NAQ:
Prefill some of these details before your client briefing and ask the client to confirm these:
Note: Some of this information may need to be asked or obtained at a later stage of the sales process if applicable (e.g. Revenue, Tax ID, Payment information).
Your Needs Assessment Questionnaire should take into account the fact that a potential client may or may not already have an existing website. If so, it is essential to conduct a thorough assessment of the client’s existing website. This will help you understand their website, identify any issues that need to be addressed, and ensure that the end product is tailored to their specific needs and goals.
Here is a list of questions to ask a potential client during the client briefing session about their website to help you gain a comprehensive understanding of their needs and requirements in terms of functionality, design, content, and performance:
For existing websites, include the following questions:
For existing websites, include the following questions:
For existing websites, include the following questions:
For existing websites, include the following questions:
Also…
If content services are part of your offering, see the additional “Content Marketing” section below for more questions you can ask.
By understanding your client’s marketing efforts, you can ensure that the website you create for them will be optimized for success.
For example, you can ask about the client’s SEO efforts, including any past keyword research or optimization. It is also important to understand any PPC campaigns the client has run, as well as their social media presence and email marketing efforts. Additionally, you can inquire about any PR campaigns the client has been a part of, including media outlets they have been featured in and soundbites from their representatives.
Here is a list of questions you could ask a potential client during the client briefing session to identify their marketing efforts related to SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing, PR, etc:
Also…
Access to platforms:
Access to documents:
The success of a WordPress website is heavily dependent on the quality and relevance of its content. As a result, it’s important to understand the client’s content needs and preferences during the needs analysis. Understanding the client’s content preferences can help the web developer to create a website that aligns with the client’s brand identity and resonates with the target audience.
In addition to gleaning information about your client’s marketing efforts and goals using channels like paid advertising, social media, etc, understanding the client’s content needs and preferences is crucial for the success of their project.
During the needs analysis, it’s important to ask the client about the types of content they want to create and publish on their website. This could include blog posts, videos, infographics, and more. Additionally, the web developer should inquire about the topics that the client wants to cover, the frequency at which they want to publish content, and the overall tone and voice that they want to convey.
Here are some questions you can ask during the client briefing session to gain a better understanding of the client’s content marketing needs and preferences and create a website that supports those goals:
Before starting any project, it is crucial to set clear expectations for the budget and timeline.
Asking the right questions about the client’s budget and their timeline expectations during the briefing session will help you and your client understand the scope of the project and plan accordingly to ensure the success of the web development project.
Here are some questions you can ask a potential client to gain a better understanding of their budget constraints, project scope, and timeline expectations to create a proposal tailored to their needs and budget:
Create a space in your questionnaire for additional notes. Use this space to record your own thoughts, observations, contact names, things your client says that you can quote, etc.
The Needs Analysis Presentation is an integral part of your overall sales process. Getting your presentation scripts and Needs Assessment Questionnaire right are vitally important.
But so is what you do before and after this stage.
Let’s look at what you can do to maximize the results from your client briefing sessions.
Here are the steps you should take before conducting your client briefing session to ensure that you are well-prepared and can conduct a successful needs analysis that will lead to a customized solution for your client’s website and marketing needs:
After conducting your needs analysis presentation with a potential client, make sure to complete the following steps to maximize your results:
Depending on how you structure your sales process, you may also want to:
Finally, you have asked clients lots of questions about their business, so be prepared if clients have some questions about your business.
As a WordPress web developer, one of the most important steps you can take to ensure the success of your projects is to conduct a thorough needs analysis with your clients. This will help you understand your client’s business, goals, existing website, marketing efforts, content needs, budget, and timeline.
Asking the right questions during the client briefing process is crucial for delivering the best solution that will not only meet their needs and budget, but hopefully also exceed their expectations.
Using a needs analysis tool like a Needs Assessment Questionnaire can save you valuable time during the client briefing and in the process of qualifying prospects for your business.
Additionally, it can help your business to identify potential roadblocks and challenges upfront, allowing you to develop a strategy that addresses these before they become a problem, keep your project on track, on budget, and on time, create customized WordPress solutions tailored to your clients’ unique needs, goals, and challenges, and establish a strong relationship with your client that can lead to repeat business, referrals, and long-term partnerships.
We hope you have found this information useful. Apply it to your business and watch your sales results improve!